


Ares Comes Back

by odiko_ptino



Series: Featured Character: Ares [1]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: (not graphic though), Gen, M/M, TW: Violence, he's my fave, poor Ares deserves better, tw: PTSD, tw: depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 19:38:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17028750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odiko_ptino/pseuds/odiko_ptino
Summary: After his capture by the Aloadai, Ares struggles to return to normal.





	Ares Comes Back

When Ares comes back, Olympus is so unchanged that it’s jarring.

The routine here is identical to how he remembered it, a year ago.  Here’s Athena, surrounded by scrolls in her library.  Here’s Apollo, playing his lyre and looking perfect. Helios and Selene make their daily and nightly sojourns across the sky.  It’s as though nothing has changed.  And for them, nothing  _has_  changed.  The only person for whom anything different happened, was Ares himself.

There’s not really any talk of what happened.  No one brings it up.  He can’t tell if they feel bad about it, or if they all genuinely don’t think much about the fact that

_he had been locked in a tiny, cramped jar for a year, a jar with the lid tied down, only to be lifted long enough that his captors can prod him with sticks or blades, or throw in rotting food or sometimes insects.  The smell makes him vomit, and that stays in with him too.  His angry shouts turn to screams turn to weeping and all of it stays inside the jar with him._

_When the clay jar shatters, and Ares blinks in the sudden light to see Hermes staring at him in horror, he doesn’t feel relief, or feel any way at all, really.  He feels dull and nonresponsive, because he’s had this hallucination before.  Though, admittedly, it hasn’t ever been Hermes who had come in previous hallucinations.  It’s been mostly Zeus._

_It isn’t until almost an hour later, when Hermes and Artemis are trudging back, carrying his wasted body because he can’t walk yet, that it strikes Ares that this is probably real this time.  He can’t stop shaking._

The rest of the Olympians’ indifference is so at odds with his experience that it leaves him disoriented. Did any of it really happen?  Did he imagine the whole thing?  Is it really possible that his own father, upon seeing his son returned after a year of imprisonment, would only thank Hermes and Artemis for their service in destroying the giants, and in retrieving Ares, like he had only been off fooling around for a year?

He isn’t even angry or upset, not right away, just confused.  Maybe they don’t realize.  Maybe they only knew that the giants had captured him.  Ares himself is intimately aware of what happened but the rest would only know what Hermes chose to tell them.

But really, does it even matter?  Ares is free. He’s out, he’s back.  No more jars, no more giants.  He probably wouldn’t even know how to react if Olympus treated him differently.  It’s probably better this way anyway, for him to get back into the swing of things.

The first two days of his return, he mostly just stays near his own quarters.  He doesn’t really talk to anyone and they return the favor – with the exception of Hermes, who comes by a handful of times.  Ares snarls through the closed door that Hermes can go eat shit, and has no idea why he’s so hostile to the one person who cared.

On the third day, he finally emerges, and his short fuse is noticeably shorter than it ever was before. The sight of everyone carrying on with their business infuriates him, and the slow pace of ordinary business makes him feel frantically restless.  

Demeter approaches him at one point, with some question of something stupid that he doesn’t care about and can’t focus on, and she’s carrying a jar in her hands.  It’s a small jar holding grain, not a person-sized prison, but Ares feels his brain go red and he snaps, bellowing at her that he doesn’t fucking  _care_ , and punches a column with his fist, breaking off a large chunk of marble, as he flees outside.  

————

He doesn’t go back the next day, or the next.  He runs, as far as he can – only fifty miles or so; he’s pathetically weak and out of condition after his year imprisoned.  When he stops running, he takes a mortal form and goes to the low part of Athens, where the drunks and criminals tend to gather, and starts a fight with several of them.  He only doesn’t kill the mortals present because he unexpectedly spots Hermes out of the corner of his eye, watching him, and Ares doesn’t know how to interpret the god’s unprecedentedly serious expression.

He takes off again, out to the wilderness, running until his lungs burn, and fights there instead.  Ares punches down.  He goes for cocky river gods and idiot satyrs and doesn’t feel bad about how easy it is to win.  He needs a few easy victories, and he’s not likely to feel excited about punching over his weight for a while.  

Just the way it always has before, fighting clears Ares’ head and heart.  He gives over his conscious thought and simply acts.  Loses himself in the moment, feeling nothing but the need to fight, the purity of having an opponent and pummeling him.  And even the cuts and bruises he gets in return make him feel alive, they spur him on to fight harder and faster.

Because a few intrusive thoughts are starting to turn up.  Ares thinks,  _I am the firstborn legitimate son of the king of the gods and that still isn’t enough reason for anyone to care that I was imprisoned and tortured for a year_.  Ares thinks,  _I’ve been getting replaced in bits and pieces for years – Hephaestus and Athena and Apollo and even Hermes, it’s time to face facts_.  And Ares imagines a scene that must have played out during that year, where any god happens to remark that Ares hasn’t been seen in months, and isn’t it so much more peaceful without him here to ruin the mood?   _I am unwanted_   _here_.

Whenever these thoughts come up, he finds a new river god and beats the shit out of him, and accepts the blows he gets in return, and it’s enough to drive the thoughts away for the moment.

————-

A few days pass like this when Hermes arrives again.  Ares is dozing fitfully beneath an oak, holding a mud-and-grass poultice to his side where he took a solid hit from an angry centaur.  

“You know, we can always get more medicine from Apollo,” comes a voice.  

Ares opens his eyes, sitting up, and immediately sees the source: Hermes is perched above him, hanging by one ankle upside-down from a tree limb like some giant blue spider. He’s smiling, as he usually is, but it seems more subdued than usual.  

“Don’t need it. This’ll go away on its own in a day,” Ares lies.  This particular hit was going to leave a mark for at least a week.

“Sure.”  Hermes shrugs, then flips off the branch and floats down till he’s hovering a little to Ares’ side.  “But you know, if you really don’t like medicine… they say that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Ares scowls.  “The fuck are you talking about, shithead?”

Hermes doesn’t even bat an eye at the scowl, the snarl, or the insult.  “I mean, if you trained more and sucked less, you might not get as many punches or kicks or spears or whatever.”

“Holy shit.  I’ve lived long enough to be lectured by the original Twinkle Toes on how to train for hand-to-hand combat.”

“Twinkle Toes!” Hermes laughs aloud, looking genuinely entertained.  Ares is having a hard time holding onto his anger.  Bafflement is starting to take over.  “Okay, look, first of all, I  _invented_  wrestling, you know!  I won’t lecture Artemis or Apollo on shooting arrows, and I won’t lecture you about using a spear.  But I know my stuff when it comes to wrestling and I’m gonna tell you for free that you suck at it.”

“I’m not trying to win the fucking Olympics here, you know!” Ares seethes at him, getting to his feet with some effort – that centaur  _really_  kicked hard.

Hermes ignores this and goes on.  “Second of all, me and Artemis have a regular sparring session thing that we do, and we need some new blood.”

“’New blood?’  Yeah, I’ll pass, so you can fuck off now.” Ares gives his most menacing glare, but Hermes only grins wider and drifts in closer.

“Mhmmm.  Why don’t you make me?” he taunts with a wink, poking Ares in the belly.

Ares jumps a little and feels his face going red.  He’s surprised by his reaction; but then again, it’s been a long, long time since he was touched with anything like playful intent.  

So he covers up by snarling and launching himself at Hermes.  “All right, you little shit – “ but that’s as far as he gets before he’s abruptly whirling around, spinning through the air, and finding himself pressed flat onto the ground, both arms pinned by the skinny, nimble god perched on top of him and giggling like he’s played the funniest joke.  

“See?  This is why you need to go to sparring with us!  This is ridiculous, Ares, I’m half your size!” Hermes still has one hand free, which he uses to poke at Ares’ face, annoying him and making the stupid blush spread.

“You’re the trickster god, you fucking cheated or something!”

“Mmmmmmaybe!  Or maybe I’m just that good.  Point is, I won, and you’re down there on the ground at my mercy.” Hermes pretends to poke his finger up Ares’ nostril.  Ares growls and tries to throw him off, with no success.

“Fine!  Fine, so you’ve got a decent move.   _One_  decent move.”

“I can show you the rest of ‘em,” Hermes is leaning over now, breath ghosting over Ares’ ear.  “Some of my greatest secret moves.  Arty’s got some good ones too.  Maybe if you give us enough time, we can get you to a point where you’re not embarrassing yourself like this.  Or, I can keep bugging you until you give in, your choice!”

Ares slumps in defeat. “You are the worst, most miserable little shit.”

“Aww, I like you too, Ares,” Hermes says brightly, patting his face and snatching his hand back when Ares attempts to bite him.  “Well, come on, then.  Arty’s waiting.”  

He lifts off of Ares, who stands up reluctantly, rubbing his arms.  “Right now?  You’re doing this right now?”

“ _We’re_  doing this right now, yeah,” Hermes corrects him happily. “But don’t worry!  We’ll go easy on you, since you’re a beginner.”

Ares wants to throw something back at him but honestly, he just got his ass handed to him with pitiful ease, which makes it hard to take the high ground here.  So he just mutters “gonna really love smashing your face into the mud, Twinkle Toes,” with as much defiance as he can manage before following after the messenger god as he flits through the air.

If he’s going to be honest with himself – and Ares is nearly always honest with himself – he would have to admit that he’s been getting weary of doing the rounds with the same rowdy, savage drunks of Greece.  He doubts that he’ll go back to the sparring sessions, not after this one time; but it’s something different, anyway.

In the same vein of being honest with himself, he’s a little uneasy about what it means that it’s Hermes and Artemis.  Obviously, it’s significant that it’s both of them.  The ones who came to get him.  He doesn’t know what to expect, but if they start talking to him about his feelings, then Ares swears to himself that he’ll kick ‘em both in the teeth and run off – hole up in Thrace or even Egypt or further.

It never happens. Ares is bracing himself the entire walk to the “secret sparring grounds,” expecting Hermes to bring up The Jar or how badly Ares has been re-integrating in Olympus; but Hermes only talks about how he and Artemis have been doing this for a while now, it had started as a coordinated effort to prank Apollo, catching off-guard with a tag-team maneuver (which was a major success, Hermes proclaims), and they’d worked so well together that they kept it up, and blah blah blah blah, the guy never shuts up.  But he says not one word about Ares’ situation, beyond occasionally referencing one of his “pathetic, sad-sack fights.”  

When they arrive, Artemis greets him with mild surprise – “Hermes said he was going to ask, but I didn’t think you’d come!   At least, not without a fight…”  

“There was a tiny altercation, but Ares saw reason quickly after I kicked his butt,” Hermes replies cheerfully.

“I’m guessing you cheated?” Artemis smirks.

Hermes pouts.  “Why does everyone think that?  Is it so hard to believe I’m just good at what I do?”

“Let’s just say you have a reputation.”

Ares mostly just watches for a while.  He’s made himself tense with anticipation, but he feels it slowly ebbing away as Artemis and Hermes simply proceed to do exactly what they said they were doing – sparring with each other.  

Artemis has an interesting style – much more defensive.  She tends to keep herself firmly in place, choosing to react effectively to whatever Hermes throws at her, rather than put her neck out unnecessarily.  When she does choose to make the first move, therefore, it’s unexpected and quick.

Hermes is unpredictable. He darts about swiftly, hardly ever bothering to keep a defensive position, trusting his speed and flexibility to keep him out of harm’s way.  He excels in spotting the opening, the weakness, even if the window is only open for a second, and taking advantage.

They don’t just spar physically – the banter between them is constant and entertaining.  Ares is a little envious of how easily they trade insults (and compliments, on occasion, when one of them does something particularly impressive).  

After a while, Artemis declares that she’s tired of mopping the floor with Hermes (they’ve been fairly evenly matched, actually) and gestures for Ares to come out into the ring.

Ares is nervous suddenly, because he doesn’t know how they’d fight together when he was in prime condition, but at the moment he can already predict that it’s going to be another floor-mopping victory for her.  “Hmph. I dunno.  I know how Apollo is.  If he finds out I’ve been beating his sister, he’s going to lose his shit. Might even change facial expressions.”

Artemis smiles, unfooled, and cracks her neck while Hermes drags Ares out into the ring.  “Oh, that’s not going to be a problem,” she says.

It’s not.  Apollo has nothing to fear for his sister’s safety that day, not from Ares.  She lands him on his ass every time.

But they do show him some of their moves, as promised.  Generally, when Ares had gone around fighting before, he had simply charged in like a bear, counting on his fury and pure power to drive him through the fight.  Tactics were Athena’s specialty, not his: Ares is a man of power and passion.  Bloodlust, as others call it.

His power’s gone, for the moment, and though he knows he’ll recover his strength eventually, it’s exciting to see different methods of doing this.  And they certainly seem like they work better.

So it’s to his own complete surprise that he finds himself returning, the next time Hermes comes to pester him.

And he keeps returning.

Before he realizes it, several weeks have passed, and he’s even won a few times, and he hasn’t been to fight satyrs or mortals in a while.  He’s getting a bit of confidence back, and the regular action keeps him from dwelling too much on what happened before, and good riddance.  He’s happy not thinking about it at all.

He should have guessed that would come back to bite him in the ass eventually.

The wall breaks one day about two months after he’s returned, and six weeks after he started sparring.  He’s asked about a particular wrestling move that Hermes and Artemis have demonstrated, which is entirely new to him.

“Yeah, Dionysus learned it while he was wandering around in the southeast,” Artemis says.  “We only picked it up from him about, what, nine months ago?  No, only eight.”

“About that long,” Hermes agrees.  “So we haven’t had it mastered for very long…. Hey?  Ares?”

All at once, very abruptly and unexpectedly, the words hit Ares hard.  He’s pressed his hand to his forehead, as though that will stop the sudden vicious headache threatening.  He can feel himself reeling slightly.

“Ares?  What happened?  Sit down or something,” Artemis is saying, though Ares barely hears her.

“Eight months ago.  I was only seven months in the jar then. Only halfway,” he croaks, and water springs to his eyes.  He has no idea why or how such an innocuous statement could bring it all back to him like this – hell, he’d seen and heard far more direct reminders of his imprisonment. He didn’t even get like this when he saw the jars.  But even as he thinks this, he realizes why ‘eight months’ is different.

The jar was bad.  But the knowledge was worse.  “No one came,” he says, and his breath is short.  “They were mad because it had been half a year and they thought someone would ransom me by then.  They – they said –“

He can’t finish the thought because the pain is lodging in his throat.  The Aloadai giants had said, wouldn’t you guess it’s our luck we captured the one no one wants; give it another year just in case, and then kick the jar off into the ravine and try again with another one.  And Ares had known that no one would come, and they hadn’t, and the days had stretched into eternity, and Aloadai occasionally kicked and rattled the jar around just for fun, just to hurt him, and then they’d go away and there was silence and Ares couldn’t tell if the year had already passed and now he was at the bottom of the ravine, to stay there forgotten until he died.

“No one came, not for over a year,” he rasps.  His voice takes on pleading tones against his will.  “I thought I would be there forever.  I thought – didn’t anyone notice?  No one gave a shit at all??”  

Hermes and Artemis both look stricken.  “We didn’t realize what happened,” Artemis says softly.  

“No one even looked! The giants said!  No one – Zeus – didn’t even realize I was – fuck.   _Fuck_. I know I’m not fucking Athena, or Apollo or some other perfect shithead that everyone loves, but I thought that – I thought someone would still care if I was – fuck,” he finishes desperately, and a few shameful tears are dripping off his eyelashes in spite of his furious attempts to blink them away, and it’s while he’s standing there shaking that he feels Hermes wrap his arms around his shoulders.

“No one knew you were there,” Hermes says, sounding both fierce and heartbroken.  “We all thought you’d just gone off somewhere, to start a war in India or Egypt maybe.  No one had any idea you had been captured, until Eriboea came and told me you’d been there a year.  If I’d had any idea, any sooner, that would have been the day I went in to get you out. I swear it.”

Artemis has vanished, having the intuitive sense to leave them to it while she pretends to get water from a spring or something.  Ares goes still, looking away.  He doesn’t know what to say and doesn’t think he could force any words out anyway, so he focuses on just keeping himself still.  

Hermes speaks again, into the silence.  “I was almost sick when she told me.  And when I saw you – after we got in, and I realized where you were and broke it – I’ve never felt worse about anything in my life.”  

There are no witnesses but Ares still fights down any display of emotion.  There’s still one more hard question to ask.  “Did – did Zeus know you and Artemis came to get me.”  _Did he send you._

“We didn’t wait to be told.” This both isn’t, and is, an answer. It’s devastating, but Ares guesses he always knew.  

Hermes rests his head on Ares’ shoulder; it’s the most intimate touch Ares can remember experiencing. “I never told anyone about the jar. I figured it wasn’t my place to tell them.  Maybe I should have.”

“No,” Ares says, and is horrified by how weak his voice sounds.  He clears his throat and starts again.  “No.  They knew enough.  They saw me, starved and bleeding and – and you and Artemis dragging me in.  They got a pretty good idea and they could have asked. They don’t need to know the rest.”

Hermes slumps a little bit. “If you’re sure…”

Hermes is the one who broke the jar.  Hermes hauled him up onto his shoulders; carried him out, past the corpses of the giants that Artemis had helped slay.  Hermes follows him when he goes out, Hermes invited him to go sparring in the first place. Hermes kept the jar a secret; he can keep this one too.

“I don’t want to give them the chance,” Ares says.  “This way, I’ll never know for sure.  I can imagine they would have felt differently if they knew.  But if you tell them…”  he trails off, tries to shrug nonchalantly.  

Hermes sighs and quirks his lips into a mirthless smile.  “I get it.  Sure, I’ll keep it to myself.  But, for the record…I’m sorry it happened.  I hate that it happened.  I’m just glad I could get you out.”

And that almost pushes Ares over the edge, throat closing up and eyes watering, but he turns away and gives Hermes a light shove, dislodging him.  “Yeah, me too.  Thanks. And, it’s fine, you know?  I’m here, that’s the main thing.  I can live with it.”

—————————

The sparring continues regularly.  Hermes invites himself into wherever Ares happens to be and makes a nuisance of himself until Ares is ready to go.

After a few months of this, Ares is much closer to his old self – physically, at least.  He can hold his own in a fight and wins much more often. He can run indefinitely now, without getting winded after fifty miles.  He weighs what he did before he was captured: a good solid frame packed with muscle.

Mentally… recovery is slower there.  He still doesn’t like to look directly at a jar.  He doesn’t like enclosed spaces of any sort, and always keeps track of the exit if he does have to spend time in a room.  

In his capacity as a god, he silently takes on another domain – that of the prisoner of war.  He will not tolerate the mistreatment of prisoners, and brings his full wrath on anyone who commits this sin.  He does this regardless if he was technically on their side or not, which infuriates Zeus and Athena and practically everyone else. But Ares is resigned to their scorn and determined to do what matters to him.  

There are nights when he dreams that he is back in the jar.  Or rather, that he had never left the jar in the first place: he was never rescued, and this whole time he imagined he was free was just a particularly vivid and detailed hallucination.  The dream itself is vivid, filled with excruciating detail: he can almost feel the hateful clay walls, closing in on him, forcing him to curl over; he can smell his own sweat and bile; he can hear the laughter of the giants outside. Worse, he can hear the silence when they go away and he’s left to himself and he knows he’s trapped there forever, he will never escape, no one is coming for him.

Waking from the nightmare brings him no relief.  He can’t immediately tell what’s real, the jar or his room.  He drags himself up, goes outside, and runs.  It’s good to remind himself that he can move.

Usually, Hermes finds him pretty quickly, and drifts along behind him, making small talk by himself for miles and never seeming bothered when Ares doesn’t answer back.  When Ares stops running, Hermes offers a flask of spring water, never pausing in his stupid stories and jokes.  After a while of this, when he’s judged that Ares is settling down, Hermes throws in a few other playful gestures – chucking pebbles at his head; riding on his shoulders; zipping in for a quick kiss on the cheek because he knows it makes Ares redden; laughing and messing up his hair.

He doesn’t see Artemis as often – she’s always been more reclusive in general, preferring to roam freely through her forests with her hunters rather than spending time on Olympus. Ares thinks she might be onto something there – she stays aloof when so many other gods are consumed by their jealousies, betrayals and infighting.

But there are times when Hermes is not present, out on an errand for Zeus, when Ares has one of his nightmares.  Ares gets outside and runs, and runs, and runs; but the burning in his lungs isn’t enough to dismiss the lingering memories.

He runs until he’s at Artemis’ Grove.  He charges past some angrily protesting women, ignoring them, and draws up short when he sees Artemis, lounging against a tree and eating a peach and watching two of her girls do each other’s hair.  She stands up abruptly when she sees him.

“Arty – Artemis. I need – I request a sparring match,” he manages to spit out, trying not to look as desperate as he feels.  

Artemis only nods. “Sure.  Let’s go; this way.”

They spar, and Ares loses – he’s too distracted.  But it helps, being able to fight against something, and it helps to have someone around who knows.

Between the two of them, it’s bearable, and time passes more easily.

———

Three and a half thousand years later, Ares is in a bed.  The gods don’t always keep up with mortal inventions but he’s glad that this one caught on; sleeping on a mattress is infinitely more pleasant than sleeping on a pallet on the floor.  Ares’ chambers are pretty sparse in every other way, but he does not skimp on the mattress (also, Aphrodite insists).

It’s easy to sleep too long in a bed – more than once, Ares has missed a council meeting because he’s sacked out on his beloved pillow-top.  They’ve stopped sending Hermes to get him, after the millionth time that Ares has indicated that he doesn’t particularly give a damn what’s decided in the meeting (honestly, it’s a wonder he still has a throne there).

So when Hermes arrives, throwing the door open noisily and flinging himself on top of Ares, he knows immediately that he hasn’t slept through a council meeting this time, but rather a sparring session.

Well, he arrives at that conclusion after a few busy seconds, actually.  His first immediate reaction is to yell and swing a wild punch at the noisy person or creature that just burst in and shocked him awake.  

Hermes easily deflects the blow and uses the momentum to flip Ares partway around, pinning his legs and pressing Ares’ face into the mattress in one fluid motion.

“And this, right here? This is  _exactly why_  you shouldn’t sleep through a sparring session. It’s been more than three millennia and I can still beat you almost without even trying!”

Ares slumps slightly as his brain finally catches up to the situation and recognizes Hermes.  “Pretty sure any asshole could win a fight if they attack when their opponent is sleeping, you noisy fuck!” he snarls, but his voice has no bite in it.  Secretly (though he’d die before admitting it), he feels moved to see proof, even all this time later, that Hermes is still checking up on him, and really isn’t going to let Ares disappear again.  

Obviously he can never say this sort of thing out loud, so he just curses and struggles to get out of Hermes’ hold.

Hermes releases him from the pin and floats up into the air, giving Ares a light kick in the butt as he goes.  “Shouldn’t have been sleeping anyway, idiot.  You have someplace to be and now you’re gonna be late.  I’m going to go tell Artemis and we’re gonna make you do two hundred pushups as punishment.”

Ares smirks and stands up. “I’m gonna get there first and get Artemis to make  _you_  do em instead.”

“ _When_  I get there first I’ll tell her to make you do  _three_  hundred just for generally being a dumbass!”

“I’ll make you do twelve hundred just for having a face like the back end of a horse!”

Hermes laughs.  “Okay, cute.  I can see you’ve learned a  _little_  bit about zippy insults from me over the years.  But Ares, come on, you’re challenging  _me_ , Hermes, Swiftest of all Gods – Aaack??!!”

Ares snags Hermes by one winged ankle and flings him backwards into the open closet, where the messenger god tumbles down to be buried in an avalanche of clothes. “Wasn’t the only thing I learned from you, pipsqueak.”

“You cheater!!” Hermes is trying to sound appalled through his laughter.  “Are you seriously – I am mortally offended!  UNFAIR.”

“Pfft.  ‘Fair’ is where you get cotton candy,” Ares retorts, and kicks the door shut behind him before taking off.

By the time they make it to the sparring grounds, where Artemis is waiting, the two have tripped each other, shoved each other into mud, and otherwise spontaneously broken into tussles that leave them both looking ragged and panting for breath, about twenty minutes late.

Artemis shakes her head in mock disgust.  “The funniest part is, I can’t tell just from looking at you if you’ve been fighting storm giants, or making out with each other.”

“If we’d been making out, you’d know because I’d have to carry Ares on my back due to him swooning,” Hermes informs her, receiving an elbow to the ribs as a result.

Artemis shrugs.  “Hey, I don’t mind if you two do half the work for me in kicking your butts!”

She  _does_  kick their butts this time, for the most part. She’s the clear first place champion. Apparently inspired by her remarks, Hermes cheats his way to second place by flirting shamelessly during his matches with Ares.  Artemis catches one compromising moment on Hermes’ camera, who promptly sets it as his phone background.

They traditionally go for food after a sparring match – this time, it’s curry, inspired by one of Hermes’ winning wrestling moves that he learned in India.

When the curry arrives at their table, it’s served in a clay pot.

Seeing the clay vessels, as always, makes Ares briefly remember.  But this time he barely pauses before lifting the lid and helping himself, rolling his eyes as Artemis messes up the punchline of a joke and Hermes surreptitiously steals more than his share of Kashmiri naan.


End file.
